In Galciv1 you basically built the same batch of improvements in the same order on every planet. The sliders were how you could influence your social/military/research balance on a galactic level.

In Galciv2 we got the ability to place buildings on planet squares. This let us choose our sliders (through the factory/lab decision) on a planetary level rather than a galactic level.

The Galciv1 slider controls were left in Galciv2. When you have both, especially in their current form, they just don't integrate well together. What we end up with is two sets of slider controls. The Galciv1 slider controls are simply more powerful than the Galciv2 slider controls (the buildings). This is what makes 100% factories or labs strategies optimal.

Feel free to disagree.

You're definitely not "screwing the AI in trades for cash." The AI will pay you far less for techs than you'd have to pay if you were buying from the AI. You can be a tech whore, but then you won't have a big tech advantage. In fact, you'll usually be behind in tech because you won't be buying what the AI has uniquely, whereas you'll be selling what you have uniquely. Whoever suggested that you could screw the AI for cash hasn't played much DA!




It just makes more sense to do it that way sometimes. There's nothing silly about it. Let's say that with a balanced production you'd get a ship in 3 turns, an improvement in 3 turns, and a tech in 3 turns. You can wait around until turn 3 and get all at once, or you can play with sliders to get tech on turn one, improvement on turn 2, and ship on turn 3. That way you have the tech two turns "early," the improvement one turn early, and the ship on a "normal" schedule. And you could change that order depending upon your circumstances. If that's the case, then what's silly is not doing it.




I can't and don't really want to argue with this. It would just be a different game, that's all. I personally like it how it is, and it would take quite different strategies to adjust to what you're suggesting.




That's exactly how I feel. As long as people are aware that a basic factory, for instance, won't produce 4mp unless you have the production slider at 100% and the military slider at 100%, there shouldn't be a problem. I think many people get upset when they expect a NLC to give them 22 rp right away and then see that it's actually only giving them 8-10. But once you learn how to use the sliders as they are, it's a fun system, IMO.

Ok. A beginners perspective on the matter.

When I first started playing (8 games ago), I fiddled with sliders, mostly having social around 20-30% and the rest split between military and research as needed. I though I understood the system, and I do.

Then I read about 'all factory' and such strategies. My first thought was: That can't possibly work.

Then I tried it.

*Heiliges Kanonenrohr*

The industrial output you can achive is just... just... *gestures wildly and starts to hyperventilate* obscene!

Now, this was only my ninth game, so I played on subnormal, but I am convinced that I would have won just as easily several difficulties higher, given that particular galaxy setup.

To all of you who just dismiss this strategy: Try it first. It sounds easy, just 'build factories all over the place and you win'. It isn't. Even on such a low difficulty, I found it hard to get the economy going, you still have to keep the people happy while generating enough taxes to burn in your furnaces. And just when you think you got it figured out, along comes 'enhanced factories' and suddenly you have a hole the size of the galactic core in your wallet.

On the other hand, it is just insane fun to point at your shiny new ship design, click on the governors tab, say 'make it so' and two turns later the galaxy is swarming with spaceships.

So, in conclusion: It's not an exploit IMO. It's how the slider system works, it's a lot of WORK, actually, and just a different style of play. Playing with 'normal' worlds comes easier, requires less micromanagement and planning ahead. In my opinion, the 'all factory / labs' strategy is harder to make it work, so that balances off nicely with the immense potential.

Yes, you do need to find a way to pay for all of that production. With a mix (excluding upkeep, bonuses) of buildings you only need to pay 36bc/turn for five tiles with a mixed approach, vs needing to pay 90bc/turn for five tiles with an all labs approach, for instance.


Um, partly. Partly it is necessity. If I'm in a game where between my planets I control 100 tiles, and my opponent controls 100 tiles but is getting +200% to his output, I need to find a way to make my 100 tiles compete or I have lost. While having buildings that produce less than their max is... irksome, the real issue is micromanaging to get the MOST out of every single tile in your empire. I never (anymore) just randomly slap down an entertainment building or a farm or a stock market, etc. Every single tile is measured for its usefulness and purpose to my overall objective. That is a level of detail and approach most people probably don't take the game to. It is probably a good thing that they don't.


I hope you continue to have a good time. I propose this strategy with utmost seriousness. However, it is not the only way to play, and it is not how I play every time. However, I do not feel it points to the "economic side" of the game being broken. It is very difficult in the early and middle game to afford using this strategy, and you need to think very carefully about each building upgrade you research in your chosen line. Indeed, it is the economic component that I feel balances out the otherwise clear advantages this strategy brings.


No need to quit on account of this strategy. It is harder than it sounds. You MAY run out of difficulty levels you can't beat once you master this, however.


Exactly. And as Iztok stated above, can lead to a crushing level of micro management that can lead to feeling like a grind. This is a strategy that is not intuitive, not necessarily easy to pull off without practice, but that gets you the absolute most value per tile. If you are playing at a level where you can afford a certain amount of waste or inefficiency per tile (which is most difficulty levels), then this is probably just a lot of work for an easy win.

And who wants an easy win? At that point... time to up the difficulty

- Wyndstar

Wyndstar, I like your response.

Maximizing precious tiles is a bit tough. I've considered whether taking a social production bonus or a research bonus is most appropriate for factory-only. One clearly creates more results, but the limits of focused-research are where I normally fall behind. Taking it to extremes, I can get about a +50% bonus to research, which may be what is needed to not only progress smoothly through techs, but also takes some of the load off the economy. Do you have any ideas or strategies for increasing research to remain competitive? I can only think of abilities, mining a research resource, or just stealing tech through conquest/spys. Against a higher AI, it's hard to keep tech levels high without tech trading.

My typical map settings (due to PC limitations) are a Dread Lords medium map, 5 opponents, no tech trading, abundant habitable, common planets, common stars. I had no problems using a balanced approach up to and including the Maso difficulty level. Lost a first Suicidal and came here looking for any strategy tips. I came acroos this all factories/all labs approach. I've had a very hard time making either of these strats work on Maso. I think I now know why. Typically the colony rush, on my settings, is over after 30 turns, with everyone getting approximately 10 planets. IMO, this is not enough to make either strat work. Any comments? Also, just for clarification. Does all fact/lab mean every tile filled with them? E.g. PQ10 planet has 9 fact/labs.

With an all factory approach there are a few things you can do:
1) Number of worlds. If you start to conquer early, the sheer number of planets (and therefore tiles) you bring under your control can make up for any shortfall. In addition, if you are conquering a lot early you will steal a good number of techs. All factory strategies research at a crawl when you have 2-20 worlds. When you have 100+, it is a breeze.

2) Go with research bonus +20%, tech party +20%, and then early go for a few other key techs and wonders. Planetary improvements give you a +10% research. Sensors III (quick to research) gives you a wonder that adds another +10%. Go Altarians for another +25%. Already I have no research resources but am closing in on +100%. Add in one resource or a few anomaly boosts, and you are there.

3) Going all factories means lots of production capacity... so you should have some worlds that you can dedicate to kicking out constructors. For me, I try to use my lowest level worlds because they still manage a constructor per turn. Then, economy starbase spam. Many people consider this a cheese approach, however.

4) Flip early. And I mean real early. Start off rush buying 2-3 labs and set research to 100%. Get about 10-15 key techs over the next 5-12 turns. By mid March/early April, build over everything with all factories and never look back. This little early kickstart can actually pay huge dividends. It works best if you go for sensor/factory/economy/diplo techs. I know that probably sounds like all of them But seriously. I might start a game going planetary improvements >> sensors III >> impulse drive >> xeno economics >> xeno factory >> trade, then build my econ capital and switch over to all factories. I left out all of the sub steps, but in theory you should be researching several techs per turn anyway. With just that as a basis you will have a basic boost to your economy, diplomacy, research, and colony/anomoly rush, and the factories you do build are going to be the ones you want to stick with for a long time. I mean really, once you have those out of the way, what is the tech you really NEED early game? It doesn't matter what you go for after that with your pathetic factory based research, you can start to build your infrastructure.

Just some ideas, anyway.
- Wyndstar

I got it to work with just two planets. Read my Altarian Rebellion AAR for a step by step description of getting this to work.


Nope. Well, kinda nope. A PQ 10 is going to need a colony, true, but you will also want a starport. You will still need economy worlds/structures to run it all. The point is any tile you want to assign to producing hammers/shields/beakers (rather than pop/economy, for instance) you want to make all the same throughout your whole empire.

For instance, say you typically build a PQ 10 world thusly:
1 colony
1 starport
1 farm
1 morale building
1 stock market
3 factories
2 labs

And that is how you build all your PQ 10s. Switching out 2 of the labs to factories, so you only have factories on every world is the basis of this strategy. If you keep all of your producing buildings to being labs or factories then you can keep all of your buildings operating at 100%.

I'm not saying that is how you should design your PQ10s by the way, it is just used by way of example.

- Wyndstar

If you're going with an all-factories build, instead of using ability points on research, why not focus them on diplomacy or even use the Super Diplomat super ability? Well-played, and with a bit of luck, you might be able to have an all-factory build with most abilities in production and economics and use diplomacy to keep up in the tech race. You'll probably always be behind by a little bit, but the extra production should give you the ability to throw out enough just-barely-obsolete ships if necessary.

One of the big advantages of all-factories is your ability to quickly build and upgrade a whole mess of economic starbases. The resulting research bonuses (as large as +384%) make it fairly easy to catch up in that department.

I haven't checked, but is the economy starbase research boost applicable to focused research? If it is, then you can turn off production on worlds surrounded by starbases (to save money if need be) and get the massive research bonus which actually turns them into decent research worlds. That would definitely compensate for the overall lack of research. If using research abilities (or innate race research bonus) then the early game 100% research blitz (which I hadn't thought about) would sustain you until you've built up an infrastructure - it's an excellent strategy.

Yes, it does boost focus research. Over a thousand research on a planet with no labs is quite possible.

I'm certainly no expert in those strategies yet, but I've played 1 game with the all-lab approach at crippling level and while it was somewhat tough at the start (not being able to build planetary improvements and ships quickly) it was in the end a real pushover.
Once I had 2 large ships built I basically controlled the whole (medium) galaxy with them.
But it was no fun, the needed micromanagement and the 8esp. in the beginning) permanent need to sell techs took way too much time.

Now I just started a game with all-factories and while I just have passed the first few months it's probably the best start I ever had.
This is mainly helped by choosing the Thalan. I play them for the first time and it's my first game at Maso, but their ability to build factories so extremly fast (a factory costs 96+6x5=126bc) combined with their racial production bonus - and even more from the extra points from the party-bonus and some from the ability points - pumps out some incredible production early on - and at least so far, allows me to keep somewhat up with research compared to the AIs. Gonna se how it turns out, but with the amount of worlds I managed to grab I can't imagine the AIs will really be able to beat me - unless it should act surpringly more intelligent than in my games at crippling.

But the Thalans ability to build up a world completly in like 10-15 turns (every turn you can build 1 factory + buy one cheaply) should be pretty unmatched.

This said, it's probably perfect in a setting with "abundant" (habitable) planets, in a surrounding where you an colonizy only 2 or 3 other worlds it will probably not be able to shine.

But so far I think this could really be fun to play a game at "low tech" instead of owning literaly a hunded enemy ships with a single (almost) invincible ship.

As an additional positive effect for me in this setting: since you don't want labs anyway, you can choose evil and have those nice weapons.
I'd wager that if I manage to research the Psyonic Beam (or maybe Psyonic Missile if I see I run into a too big tech gap too fast) before the AIs overrun me, I should be pretty much settled.

Anyway, so far Thalan + all-factory-approach seems to be a real winner.

I'll make my criticisms of this a little more clear and to the point. These have to do with general tenets of strategy game design that I hold, that other players may not. I think Gal Civ 2 has the potential to be one of, if not the richest strategy game ever, but right now there are some real basic game design commitments that seem a bit lacking.

1. Players should have to make meaningful decisions:

There is no point even having different buildings if the optimal strategy is to ignore influence and morale buildings, build almost no farms and only build research OR factories (and of course 80% of everything being markets). Completely takes away an element of complexity and decision making because in effect a ell run economy isn't much more complex than the one in MOO1 it just looks prettier and involves a lot more clicking (More clicking bad!). It would be more interesting if a whole palette of strategies were supportable. Also then you wouldn't need difficulty levels with absurd AI bonuses because the game would eb in efect hard.

For those of you familiar with mathematics/topology I am basically suggesting "squishing" down the strategy space so that the local maxima are not nearly so high.

Imagine a world where if you need more research you, you know actually build more labs!

2. Players should have to plan ahead:

I get generally frustated with most games allowing players to paper over mistake with instant purchases, it generally is unrealistic and typically hurts the difficulty considerably as the player can use this ability to much grater effect than the AI (IME). Moreover it tends to encourage specialized Max-Min type strategies where a player is completely ignoring significant aspects until the last possible minute (No ships until a war is declared etc.). Generally features which make the user more powerful help the player drastically more than the AI. They should be avoided if people won't miss them, and I cannot imagine people would actually miss being able to purchase things when it is not there, one of the worst game mechanics ever to enter the strategy genre.

3. Micromanagement is bad:

Generally having more clicking and more managing for the same effect is bad. It discourages casual play, and rewards those who are able to dump hundreds of hours into games. Moreover it is rewarding THE WRONG THING. I would prefer overall strategy and tactics to be more important than willingness to fiddle with taxes and focuii each and every turn. As an added bonus less micromanagement is generally MORE REALISTIC.

Is it very realistic to have one tax rate most of the year, and change it for one week before the election and have no one remember? No it is not. Likewise is it realistic to have whole sectors of the economy switching on and off week to week no. And while I recognize games are games and gameplay should almsot always trump realism, these are cases where realism would help gameplay.

Imagine if you could only adjust taxes 1% a week (the slider would remember where you set it and slowly migrate to any new positions). Now managing taxes takes several fewer clicks a year, is more realistic, and this helps makes the game more difficult, as it reduces user power. It would be even nicer of the overall spending sliders functioned in the same way.

Summary:

Now some of you might say why not just ignore such type of play if you don't like it. I do, and I play with a hgue number of "house rules", but doing so really ditracts from the immersive experience of the game when you are intentionally taking sub-optimal strategies.

I want the game to be difficult and complex, but not because I am unwilling to spend time fiddling with settigns for 10 mins each turn, and not becuase the AI is playing by a wildly inflated set of rules.

I know all you litle galactic emporers out there may not like these dieas as they mainly have to do with restricting your power, but I gaauntee you the game would be more fun interesting and difficult if it was this way and you wouldn't look back.

Sorry to go on at such length, but I am curious what some of you who clearly have spent a ton of time with the game, and are quite adept at it and its mathematics think about such changes.

Also the focus mechanic needs to be changed in some way, IMO it is nearly breaking this game completely.

Also the focus mechanic needs to be changed in some way, IMO it is nearly breaking this game completely.

I agree that the mechanic is broken in the sense that it causes there to be essentially just two production strategies that dominate all other strategies, where previously there were many more. On the other hand, I have to concede that these two strategies are at least interesting to execute. One reason is that their rigidity amplifies the "planning ahead" component of the game, which you correctly identify as an important element. "Fixing" the production model too well, "squishing" the peaks of the strategy space, may actually make the game less interesting as a whole despite increasing diversity of viable strategies; a nearly flat space is more dull than one with some high peaks.

I used to be totally in favor of modifying the focus mechanic to just act like a localized change in spending ratios. I still think there should be a change, because two is a really small number that decreases the game's replay value. But tweaking the game mechanics so that there are just a few more interesting peaks, without doing much to nerf the existing exploits, seems like it would deliver more entertainment value than squishing everything.

Micromanagement is bad:

Okay, I do agree with this. (Even if I may be one of the most fanatical micromanagers in the universe, heh.) Anything that (i) the player frequently wants to do, and (ii) the AI can be fairly easily programmed to do, should not take many clicks to do.

Ok, now you got me started lol. This is how I think it should work (which of course is only one idea out of many):

(1) There is no focus from one type to another.
(2) If I want rp, I must build labs. If I want mp, I must build factories. This is the common sense way and makes various ratios of factories/labs strategically viable/near optimal.
(3) Research capacity can be adjusted with a global slider.
(4) Production capacity can also be adjusted with a global slider, meaning total mp (and therefore both military and social).
(5) However, each planet has a small slider above social/military production display. This slider controls the ratio of mp used on each of these two production types. Furthermore, planets in development can override the global capacity settings to run at max capacity, while developed planets can use default settings. This makes micromanagement and empire money management much easier (I think).

I think this is good because you can micromanage a planet as needed, but you don't have to.

Regarding the election exploit, all you have to do is make morale move toward its target value over time, rather than instantly (like 5%/week). One exception: it would always move instantly to at least 20% if its target is higher to avoid population death.

Why? Why must people insist on being insolated from their errors, that is why the difficulty levels need to get so rediculous. Does anyone really enjoy playing games where the AI has a 500% bonus and 20 different abilities? If people would just accept their mistakes, and take their lumps the game could be much easier and still difficult.

Also I have been having a lot of fun with the following house rules if anyone is interested in these issues:

1: No tech trading (I have never seen a game which handles this at all well).

2: No super abilities (no idea what these are supposed to be adding to the game, and they aren't very well balanced at all).

3: You cannot use focus ever (This game mechanic is IMO broken, or at the very least undermines the point of large portions of the games content).

4: You can only change your tax rate semiannually (January 1st and July 1st).

5: You can only change the distribution sliders quarterly/seasonally (January 1st, April 1st, July 1st and October 1st). (This can be a real problem if you are constantly shirking your military spending, and someone suddenly declares war).

6: You can only adjust the overall spending monthly (on the first each month).

7: You can only purchase on one planet a turn (I might go no purchasing at all, but then what would you do with your money?).

8: Don't make any deals with th AI you wouldn't accept if you were them.

9: Economy, Military, and Influence starbases cannot be built so thir catchment areas overlap (removes some of the temptation to do boring contructor wars).

10. Most importantly no reloading! If you sent a colony ship and a 17 week mission to grab that 27 way out in the middle of nowhere, and a Korx ship got there one turn before you, and if you had just researched impulse drive a two turns ago it would have been yours, well tough, life sucks (This exact thing happened to me today )

11. If you are going mod your race, mod the AIs races to be good too (No range bonuses abounding across the AI players (yes, people have told me they do this...).

The ones in bold I would also forward as a way to make the games economy much mroe interesting and to open up a wider diversity of "optimal" stratgies. I would think they would make the game much more fun and difulcult for the player, without hurting the AI much.

Anyway with these settings I had to go down about 2 difficulty levels (to somewhere between tough and painful). The games are also more fun and interesting as you really need to plan ahead, and think long term.

I find very large block quotes counter-productive. I'm responding to Reply #39 by Becephalus.

1.
Well, you need to understand that the game has gone through a LOT of revisions to get to this point, and it wasn't always so. Morale buildings, for instance, are still useful in all versions of DL, but with a change in morale penalties for higher populations in DA they were moved out of ever being useful. If you are building them to breed faster, you do better with fertility clinics. If you are building them to raise taxes, you do better with stock markets.

But morale buildings didn't always have decreasing effectiveness with population size. A lot of the things you don't like are the result of Stardock "squishing" our options to "nerf" "exploits". People used to build worlds with 100billion populations. Stardock decided they didn't like that. In DA, Stardock decided that they wanted everyone to have populations in a 6b to 13b range, with sharply diminishing returns on populations over 13b, to the point where populations over 18b are actually counterproductive to your empire. However, they still have a +300% food tile, which was great back when you could have 100 billion populations.

I'd rather not have as many stock markets as I do, but in making the game harder, Stardock also decided to tighten up money making. This does make the game more difficult, and you just eventually realize that it leaves few strategy options. Trade was killed in the money it gives you, but the cost of freighters didn't change. What changed was the time it took to see a return on investment, a change to the point where they pretty much precluded trade from being a meaningful money making strategy for any game shorter than 3 years.

"squishing" down the strategy space has been exactly the problem. They have squished it so far that we are down to just two strategies. IF trade was worth more again, than maybe you could build less stock markets. IF populations could be higher again, you would be able to have higher pop worlds and suddenly you might have a need for morale buildings and food distribution centers. Etc. etc.

Through revisions and "nerfing" strategies, stardock has funneled the game into having only one "most efficient" approach. Now you want them to apply yet another "nerf"?? The exact opposite is needed if you want to promote diversity of gameplay.

Mind you, I'm not asking they make the game easier. I already play on the top difficulty level, and honestly I wish there were even higher ones available. But you seem to think that making the game harder increases variety. Over playing this game for a year, I have to disagree. I find that every time they make the game harder, a player's realistic options for victory are reduced.

2.
And you do have to plan ahead. The economy in this game moves like a slug at this point. You need to know where you are going to be at way ahead of time. Sure, you can rush buy a building or two or a ship or two, but you can't rush buy technology. Rush buying has the effect of speeding up a few strategy choices... it does NOT patch poor planning. What you are seeing with these planet building strategies (all of one type of production building, 1 farm, nothing else but banks) actually IS the result of planning ahead. I know the problems I'm going to run into, and have developed a strategy that avoids them.

3.
I agree micromanagement is bad.
However, I disagree with a lot of the rest. Is it realistic that tax rates change near an election? Have you never experienced a change in basic goods/gas prices/interest rates in the weeks and months close to an election, only to quickly change thereafter? It happens all the time. Is the current voting system exploitable? Very. Should it be changed? I think so.
But what happens if you can REALLY only change taxes 1% per turn? One, more people will just use imperial governments and ignore elections. Improved governments have had their bonuses scaled back many times already. What would end up happening is that rather than the current diversity where players decide what tax rate works for them and adjust based on galaxy circumstances (diversity in play styles is as good a thing as no micro management) - players (like me) would end up coming up with specific patterns that always worked best. We could do this because choice had been removed. You would end up with people complaining that how come in turns 1-40 you always left at a 29%,and then in turns 40-50 you always increased to 39%, and then in turns 50-70 you always stayed there, and then turns 70-90 you always increased to 59%, etc. The answer would be that because Stardock removed choice, it became easier to get a handle on all the variables and come up with a "most efficient" strategy for all game environments.

Summary.
I disagree that focus is breaking the game completely. In fact, I strongly disagree with most of your conclusions. Do I wish some things were balanced differently? You bet I do. I would love to be able to just talk with Brad for a few hours about what specific balance changes I would make and why. Of course he would have the ultimate executive decisions over changes... but why am I so special that I would get to do that? You think there wouldn't be players who disagreed with the game balance choices I made? I think a lot of the problems are unintended consequences. Changes made to fix exploits in the 1.2 patch of DL are ending up having a drastic effect on DA 1.6, because of the ripple effect changes have in this system.
Honestly, I think Stardock has gone too far in restricting choice. Iztok was the first person who really started to convince me that a steady stream of game balance revisions was funneling the game into just a few playstyles. Now this is what we have. I still love this game tremendously. I would still tweak a bunch.

You can always adopt an artificial set of rules to make the game harder. I have done this in the past, often just to see if I could do it. Try playing a game where you NEVER research even a single tech. Ever. You can still beat the game, but boy is it hard. There is also a lot less choice. The last thing this game needs is even less choice. It has thrived due to its many options and trying to let players play the game their own way.

- Wyndstar

Bravo Wyndstar!

I know you've felt the effects of all the changes to the game, so your perspective is realistic. I've been trying to figure out two things; the first is "given the current rules, how do I maximize my empire?". The second is "could certain mechanics be improved so that I can win by doing something more interesting?"

It really does grind after awhile due to the lack of choices on higher levels. Sure, on Normal I can mess around with Influence starbases, but only because the AI sits on its butt waiting for destruction. I would like to see mechanics that encourage using more buildings/approaches and that put the AI on par with the player without needing massive bonus points. I prefer to form different strategies, not just calculate "efficiency" so I can beat the AIs increased numerical superiority; yet it is necessary at higher levels.

Wyndstar

Honestly, not to be a jerk, but that just sounds like a story of them not knowing what they are doing/having a plan balance wise. I am one of the main multiplayer developers/balancers for a fairly popular online game. It is both easier and simpler than it seems I suppose...

I know the game has gone through a lot of revisions, I have been playing it since GC. I just never got invovled on the forums much, as with no multiplayer there was no reason to communicate, but lately at work there is nothing to do but sit and read all day, so I have lots of time to think and post.

Morale buildings, for instance, are still useful in all versions of DL, but with a change in morale penalties for higher populations in DA they were moved out of ever being useful. If you are building them to breed faster, you do better with fertility clinics. If you are building them to raise taxes, you do better with stock markets.

It should be fairly strightforward to fix this curve. Take a a few samples from games in early mid and late stages, see what the expected benefit of the different buildings are. Adjust the curve.

To start just make them say 15% more effective (not 15% in game terms, 15% over current level). If that doesn't help do it again. Incremental change is the way to balance competing objects like structures. You subtley improve the underbuilt ones, and degrade the over built ones until they all have the intended frequency. Big changes are bad cause you reach whole new equilibria environments and ruin all the previous work (which seems like what recently happened here?).

A lot of the things you don't like are the result of Stardock "squishing" our options to "nerf" "exploits"...

..."squishing" down the strategy space has been exactly the problem. They have squished it so far that we are down to just two strategies...

No alot of things I don't like come from poorly thought out game design (I mean this is the broadest sense), or perhaps poor implementation of "balancing". Don't get me wrong I do not want to sound all negative, this is a wonderful game, hell if it was not wonderful I would not care what it was like I would just sink the copious hours in takes into somethign else. The production values are excellent, the content is great, the frequency of patches is admirable. The overall concept, while not original is very well executed.

As for the squashing of solutions, that is exactly what should happen. Ideally you want ZERO dominant solutions, or even remotely dominant ones. You want to play to have to make clever tech choices, building choices, and ship tactics based on the situation. Not follow some cookie cutter solution that dominates for 90% of settings. In life there are no ideal solutions in an environment like this, or at least no even remotely computable ones. Its not even good if there are 3 or 4 solutions. To use a starcraft analogy a version where carrier spam and battlecruiser spam work isn't any more "balanced" than a game where just one of them works, spamming anything shouldn't work and is as sign the games abtraction is breaking down.

Ideally to win you should have to use all the all or at least most of the features in the game. Otherwise what is the point of them? I think there is a tendancy for people in games to view these cookie cutter solutions as "strategies". I mean really what is the point even? It would be like playing Halflife with a walkthrough right next to you. Not that I am directing any of this at the players, by all means be should try to find solutions to the game, but the goal of the designers should be that there are none. The only solution what anyone in real life would do making your many decisions better than your opponents. Finding holes in game mechanics is definitely an admirable skill, but repeatedly making use of them isn't strategic, it is the antithesis of strategy. It turns the game into the same difficulty as an MMORPG, and the only way to compensate is to make the AI have insane bonii across the board.

Now you want them to apply yet another "nerf"?? The exact opposite is needed if you want to promote diversity of gameplay.

That comment doesn't even make sense...see above...

Mind you, I'm not asking they make the game easier. I already play on the top difficulty level, and honestly I wish there were even higher ones available. But you seem to think that making the game harder increases variety. Over playing this game for a year, I have to disagree. I find that every time they make the game harder, a player's realistic options for victory are reduced.

I don't want the game harder in the sense you do. I don't want yet higher AI bonii. It is much easier to balance, more realistic, and players would have a better time, if they had less power/control (they will hate giving it up at first, I can already see you would). This would allow them to play a challenging game with fewer AI bonuses. In your sense the game would be easier. Strictly speaking there is no way those highest levels should be beatable if the game was functioning properly. Ideally you would want the AI to have the exact same settings as a human, but given the state of AI currently that is not really possibly. But very few games having settings quite this insane, and it is because the solution maxima are too high. this allows you to beat the game on extremely rediculous settings, but only if you follow fairly strictly determined approach.

Notice that I said my house rules allow me to play two levels lower and still have a challenging game. An Intelligent or Genius AI can actually keep up with me because I have fewer tools for runnign my empire. Moreover if I want 10 ships today, I cannot just materialize them out of thin air, I am just screwed.

Moreover I am not talking about nerfing anything, mainly just two main things I'll summarize again below:

What you are seeing with these planet building strategies (all of one type of production building, 1 farm, nothing else but banks) actually IS the result of planning ahead. I know the problems I'm going to run into, and have developed a strategy that avoids them.

This isn't planning it is reading from a script. There are very very few choices involved. Planning in a strategic sence involves makign choices. This is what I noticed as I kept moving up in difficulty, basically my every move was already decided, what fun is that? So I decided o adopt house rules and go back to the lower levels, rather than going up levels and not being able to make choices.

I agree micromanagement is bad.
However, I disagree with a lot of the rest. Is it realistic that tax rates change near an election? Have you never experienced a change in basic goods/gas prices/interest rates in the weeks and months close to an election, only to quickly change thereafter?

Actually no I haven't, there is almsot no evidence this happens in the U.S., and the reaosn it doesn't is that it doesn't work that well. Moreover regardless of whether it works in real life or not it is horrible game design. Anything that encourages players to game th system, and micro thigns is bad.

Is the current voting system exploitable? Very. Should it be changed? I think so. But what happens if you can REALLY only change taxes 1% per turn? One, more people will just use imperial governments and ignore elections.

So what were you disagreeing about? As for your second point then you just make the morale penalties a bit lower or the bonuses a bit stronger.

Summary.
Iztok was the first person who really started to convince me that a steady stream of game balance revisions was funneling the game into just a few playstyles. Now this is what we have. I still love this game tremendously. I would still tweak a bunch.

I think one way to read this is that they having been quashing maxima and just haven't quite finsihed yet, in which cae they are doing a god job. Hopefully the highest levels will soon be unbeatable, which I think is as it should be. As for focus, try playing without it, I swear the game is more fun. You have a lot less power. If you want something expensive built you have to put it on a high production planet.

There is also a lot less choice. The last thing this game needs is even less choice. It has thrived due to its many options and trying to let players play the game their own way.

We agree completely on this, what maks you think I want less choice? A player can have more realistic choices and less power at the same time. Right now for optimum play there is really a single choice.

Anyway I'll try to restate what I said in a more clear fashion.

1: Increase the importance of underused content.

Underproduced structures (farms, influence, morale) as well as underused ship components and abilities. This will make the game involve choices. Without choices you have all the strategy of performing a piece of music, yes you need to know how to do it, but if you know how than there is nothing to it other than execution. Execution is not strategy.

2: Reduce the power of the tools avaible to the player.

Change or eliminate the focus mechanic, what is it supposed to be doing exactly anyway? Right now it is killing the building balance. Perhaps a better way to work it, if people msut simply have it would be to allow each planet to focus on one area and it would increase that production by 25% or maybe 33% (you would have to pay for the increased spending of course). That way you would need some actual production in that area for it to matter. This would kill 100% factories in one feel swoop and change little else about the game.

Change the way taxes work so the player cannot game them.

Change the way spending works so you have three independant sliders and no overall slider. This way they do not cannibalize each other production. Ideally you would also only want these to be only able to be changed slowly. This will prevent micromanagement and gaminess.

Fewer player management tools equals harder games and less micro, and more realism/ diversity in strategy.

Christ that was long sorry (took me an hour to write), anyway you are obviously a clever guy with a lot of experience, hopefully we can come to some mutal suggestions, maybe get Iztok and a few others in on them too . I don't think we disagree as much as you think we do, I just have a different way of solving these problems because I have actually worked in game thoery.

Hi!

Since I'm "challenged" I'll put together my view.


IMO the keyword here is multiplayer . You don't need to reprogram your customers each time you do changes to the game mechanics. Stardock on the opposite has to do that, and since there's only ONE developer for the AI, there's no possibility for him to do all work needed. Especially because the AI is already at 80+% of it's capability, and you probably know that for each percent of improvement over such a large number there's a disproportionally larger work needed, on asympthotic scale (e.g. moving form 80% to 85% needs 50% more of work already done, moving form 98% to 99% needs 10000...% more work).

What would be my suggestions to increase diversity:
1) Drop the victory scoring, and the Metaverse. It's IMO the prime source of the grievance. Players see their score, start comparing, and start ranting. To please them, developers start nerfing. Players adjust, and rant again, and developers nerf more. A downward spiral, that only shrinks the game diversity.

2) Drop most nerfs and caps the game has. Let players play the way they want. 100B planets with some patience, 5000000..... BCs in treasury, 50 planets for peace... To h... with balancing! Who will complan when there's no score to beat? Just plethora of different strategies, and they ALL work. If not on suicidal, then on some lower level. And players will have fun exploring them all, and that's IMO the only thing that counts.

My 2 cents.

BR, Iztok

Why not base the election results on the average morale since the last election, then players couldn't just drop taxes before the election?

That seems like a good solution. Or, have there be more or stricter penalties for lower levels of morale. That in itself would help make morale buildings worth something again.




You don't remember the election last fall (US)? What happened to gas prices? Why does the legislative process tend to change quite a bit the few months before legislative elections? No need to go on about this, it's just that I can't believe you could have lived in the US and not have noticed this happening.

The extreme shifts which are possible in the game, though, don't happen in real life. I hardly think Bush would be re-elected in 2008 if gas prices fell a couple of dollars the week before the election! But maybe I'm just underestimating the stupidity of the American people.